


Don’t Ask Me/What You Know Is True

by epersonae



Series: Aftermath [25]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Changing Relationships, Impending drama, Morning After, Multi, Polyamory, Reflecting on changes, Tattoos, tolycs tea symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 21:34:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17588840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: Every night has a morning that follows, and with the sun’s rise, Lucretia, Magnus, Barry, and Lup find their hearts somewhere new. Meanwhile, someone else muses of love, and home. (Direct follow-up to Take a Bite.)





	Don’t Ask Me/What You Know Is True

**Author's Note:**

> For a long time, I’ve thought of Friends for Life as an end point for this particular continuity, beyond which I had nothing more to say. And then I wrote Take a Bite and realized that there was a whole new direction that the story wanted to go, and this is the first step on that journey.

Lucretia sits in the quiet empty kitchen, her elbows on the table and her chin perched on her hands, one of Lup’s robes wrapped around her. She’s staring into space, and she sighs. She hasn’t noticed him, as far as Barry can tell, which means she must be very deep into her thoughts.

“Cup of tea?” he asks, already putting on the kettle for himself.

“Hm?” She looks up at him, and for all that she’s so different now, the expression of Lucretia lost in thought is unnervingly familiar. “Oh, yes, certainly.”

“You doing okay?” He takes out mugs, carefully avoiding personalized or jokey options, in favor of something simple, one of the big set of Fantasy Ikea mugs they’d bought when they first moved in.

She chuckles at the question, and when he looks back at her, her smile reaches her eyes. It does something to his heart that he would never have expected.

“Pretty well, I think,” she says. She runs a hand through her hair, and he remembers her hand in his hair. He bites his lip and looks away.

“I don’t think we have any of that rose tea; oolong alright?” She says it’s fine, but he wonders if they should get some the next time they’re out. She’d asked about tomorrow, the night before, but this is the first time he’s thought about what comes after that, and after that. Taako notices any little change in the kitchen, he thinks, and he sighs.

“Are  _ you _ alright?” she asks, and he lets out a sound that’s not quite a laugh. She rubs her eyes with the heel of her hands: her face shows lack of sleep so much more than it used to, and it’s the first time he thinks  _ Lucy’s going to get old. _ Somehow that’s bound up in the same thought of  _ I forgot how beautiful she is.  _

“I— I’ll— I’m gonna be alright, I think,” he finally stammers. She raises an eyebrow, and he fears she’s misunderstood. “It’s, you know, it’s good, just….”

The teakettle whistles as they both say “A lot” in unison. He feels his face flush when he can’t look away from her fond smile.

“There’s so many things we’ve never talked about,” she says wistfully.

“You mean….” He gestures between them.

She blushes and looks away. “Well...yes. But also….” When she looks back at him, her face is serious, her brows drawn.

“The relics.”

“Mmmm. And Fisher, and…. All of it, really.”

He sets a cup of tea down in front of her and sits down across from her. She holds her hands over the steaming cup, looking down at them. He thinks of her hands on him, just a few hours earlier, the way she touched Lup, the way Lup looked at her.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he says.

//

She’s used to waking up cuddled up against a big guy, and so at first she just snuggles in closer: he’s warm, and she’s a little chilly, and wow, she’s tired. Which is when it hits her. This isn’t Barry with his arm flung over her, it’s Magnus; she hasn’t slept curled up with Magnus since…. Since the long-lost cuddle piles of the Starblaster.

He makes a snuffling noise but doesn’t wake when she shifts out of his arms. She watches him sleep, tousled hair and weird little noises, and thinks  _ this is my brother’s boyfriend.  _ And in the century, that was just normal, they were all a big tangled mess, but now? And with things already so tenuous— Barry’s in the kitchen with Lucretia: she felt Lucretia and then Barry get out of bed, heard them moving around separately. Barry always makes tea when he gets up early. She doesn’t know Lucretia’s habits that well anymore, but a morning cup of tea seems like her.

Lup touches Magnus’s arm, just running a finger along his bicep. There’s a tattoo there now, another change that happened while she was gone: a hammer, a red ribbon, a woman’s name and his. The years in the umbrella all she could hold in her mind were the two beings who grounded her: Barry and Taako, Taako and Barry. Her love and her heart. And then later, much later she realized how much she missed Lucretia, not just her friend, but like a fire in her heart. She hadn’t even thought about missing Magnus. 

Magnus blinks awake with a look of confusion; he blinks several more times before saying, “Oh. Right.”

Lup can’t help it, she has to laugh.

“Wrong bed?” she says, and he blushes to the roots of his hair. It’s charming, really. But the chime starts in the back of her head, that as warm and relaxed as this moment is, it could all go tremendously wrong. She thinks of Taako, griping about Lucretia and Magnus. She thinks of Lucy, curled up in her arms.

And she looks at Magnus, stretching in all directions, just as burly and unselfconscious as ever. She pokes at his chest.

“I’m just funning you,” she said. Then reaching around to his side to poke at the Loch Ness Monster, “Sick tats, by the way. Don’t think I’ve ever mentioned, but those are dope.”

“Thanks!” He twists around so she can see his calf: there’s a jellyfish, its bell swirled with blues and greens, tendrils nearly reaching around his ankle. “Check this one.”

She touches it, the ink in layers, some soft, some sharp, under his leg hair. He takes a little breath at her fingertips running along his skin.

“You get that for Fisher?” she asks.

“Would you believe the original was just a whim? Made it to the ocean for the first time, after….” There’s a distant look in his eyes. “And saw this art in a tattoo place, where all the sailors went, and thought:  _ jellyfish look pretty fuckin’ cool.”  _ He laughs ruefully. “Imagine my surprise, first time I saw Fisher again, even though I didn’t…. And then later?” If it was Taako, there’d’ve been something bitter there, but Magnus sounds thoughtful, almost amused.

“Huh,” she murmurs.

“Got it touched up, later, added that for Johann.” He points to a line of music notes threaded through the slightly faded tendrils: E-G-G-B-A-B-E. She opens her hand out flat and rests her palm on the notes, on his warm skin. He puts his hand on top of hers and leans in for a kiss.

“Oh Maggie,” she says, ducking her head. He takes her hand in his.

“We’re cool, aren’t we?” he says. She looks at him for a long moment, the tips of her ears twitching slightly, and she squeezes his hand tight.

//

Lucretia and Barry are drinking tea, and he’s asking her about the wards on the base: “Happened to mention it to, uh, Kravitz, and he thought that, y’know, her ladyship might be interested in it. Might be useful...professionally?” And they’re drawing diagrams, discussing spellcraft, and honestly she’d forgotten what it was like to work with someone so knowledgeable and incisive, no one since Maureen— and she pauses with one hand in the air, tracing out one of the symbols.

“—so that one’s actually from...?” Barry pauses, looking at her with a furrowed brow. “Creesh? Am I missing something?”

She shakes her head. “No, no, just….” She trails off at the sound of footsteps and laughter coming down the stairs, looking away from Barry and towards the front hall.

Magnus, wearing rumpled boxers, comes into the kitchen mid-conversation with Lup, saying, “Oh yeah, she stared at me for like a minute, just blinking, and then she’s like ‘bud, that’s so far out of my expertise I don’t even know where to start.’”

Lup snorts. “She said that? That’s fucking amazing. You got a good friend there, Maggie.”

Lucretia puts thoughts of Maureen out of her head with a sigh, immediately recognizing the cadence that Magnus is imitating.

“ _ What _ was out of Carey’s expertise, dear?” she asks.

He blushes and laughs nervously as Lup snickers. He opens and closes his mouth, then looks away.

“Your boy Mags here asked his lesbian best buddy for fashion tips for last night’s...double date,” she says through giggles.

Lucretia exhales slowly, processing the meaning of it, trying to determine whether she’ll need to have a confidential word with Carey later. “You asked...my employee...for…?”

“Aw, now you gotta make it weird,” he replies.

“Bud, you’ve got to admit, that  _ is _ pretty weird,” says Barry, moving from the kitchen island to kiss Lup on the cheek, as Magnus protests that Carey is, in fact, his friend. 

“Morning, babe,” Barry adds as he plays with the collar of the long shirt she’s wearing. Magnus kisses his cheek, and it’s like the blush spreads from one man to the other as Barry goes pink, Lup turning her head to bump foreheads gently.

“How’s everybody feel about crepes?” asks Lup.

Magnus replies, “I could eat about a hundred of ‘em. I’m  _ ravenous…”  _ He grabs Barry’s ass and grins at Lucretia. “Pretty hungry, too.”

//

It’s an appropriately golden morning in Goldcliff, early morning sunlight coming through the gap between the curtains to light the hotel bedroom, and Taako sprawled across the bed. Kravitz watches him in silence, appreciating the quiet moment in the unfamiliar room. Any morning he can spend like this is a gift. Taako isn’t an elegant sleeper, but to Kravitz it’s the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen.

One more day together, just the two of them away from everyone else: yesterday Taako had school business that left him tired but verbose, but today has no obligations except to amuse themselves in each other’s company. And so they have plans to watch some races and to take in some sights and maybe hit the gambling tables, but if instead they lay in bed and order breakfast and lazily kiss through half the day…. Kravitz supposes that will be perfectly fine.

And then tonight, tonight they’ll go back to the house in Neverwinter with all its lively activity, the big weird noisy family that Taako loves, the rotating cast of characters, always with Lup at the center.  _ Home _ — every time Kravitz tries the word on his tongue it feels both foreign and miraculous. He finally can’t resist kissing Taako’s forehead. Taako’s entire face wrinkles up as he wakes.

“Sorry, too cold?” says Kravitz.

Taako mumbles something incoherent and pulls Kravitz close, kissing him without any prelude, then, “Could use the big lug for extra warmth, but you’ll do.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> In one of the liveshows, Travis said that Magnus has [this tattoo of the Loch Ness Monster](https://twitter.com/travismcelroy/status/935212198175105024). Headcanon accepted.
> 
> The hammer tattoo first appeared in [Someone who's nothing like you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12889485). Thanks also to blue-mood-blue for the idea of a Fisher tattoo, and to the WDA folks who helped me brainstorm tattoo concepts. And of course for coming along on this wild ride. 
> 
> Title from Never Tear Us Apart; the Paloma Faith version is the one on my Madame Director playlist, but I listened to the INXS version obsessively in junior high, when it was new.


End file.
